The Art of the Re-write

29th July 2016

A lot of my time these days is spent talking and thinking about American politics, and so I suppose my post today ought to be on that topic. But I am actually more than fed-up with this circus. I'll watch again when the clown jumps off the platform into a kiddie pool.

The Republican convention was like a really second rate act in a cheesy night club; the Democrats look positively adult in comparison. During the last election, a political journalist on TV described the American electorate as "sophisticated." Well, eat your hat. The American electorate these days looks anything but. I am with Bill Maher on this one. American voters on the whole are about as gullible as the German and Italian populace were before they elected Hitler and Mussolini respectively. If you can't see through a narcissistic nut when he is acting like a narcissistic nut, then you deserve what you get.

I keep waiting for half the population to wake up.

But I have top resign myself to the fact that it may not happen. Even Michael Moore has decided that Trump is going to win.

So, moving right along: I am a third of the way through the re-write of the last book in my time travel series.  Apart from taking out the preaching I was mentioning a couple of posts ago (well, most of it. I am a preacher's kid, after all!)  I have been moving things around a lot. It's a bit like lining up a photo shoot, going around and putting people in different places, only it isn't people or characters I'm moving so much as scenes. Thank God Almighty for cut-and-paste! I usually have an inkling when scenes are out of place as I am writing the first draft, but I am very good at denial.

But inevitably one of my readers will say, "Mmmm. That scene really intrudes here." Then I have to take my head out of the sand and do something about it.
I'm thinking that this version of the story is way better than the first. But then I also think that without any doubt, old orange-comb-over is going to lose the general election. Not being an American citizen, I don't get to vote, but everyone else had better not get complacent. Get out and vote, people, or you're going to go down on the wrong side of this historical moment! The tide will come in and your head will still be below sea-level.